If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don't ever tell which is which.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

All the contact I have had with politics has left me feeling as though I had been drinking out of spitoons.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again.